Shinji, the Psychic Child
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: A crossover between one questionable franchise and another questionable franchise, with bits of a video game and story thrown in. An alternate universe of sorts, where a simple, fourteen-year-old boy discovers a means to exact vengeance on those that have been wrong to him. This time, it'll be a combination of the anime and manga, just to increase the intensity.


Creation began on 07-07-09

Creation ended on 01-05-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Shinji, the Psychic Child

A/N: A crossover between one questionable franchise and another questionable franchise, with bits of a video game and story thrown in. An alternate universe of sorts, where a simple, fourteen-year-old boy discovers a means to exact vengeance on those that have been wrong to him. This time, it'll be a combination of the anime and manga, just to increase the intensity. Let's hurry up and do this!

School wasn't the same for Shinji Ikari for the last few days. All he had to do was look at an empty desk near him and know that one of his best friends was gone and wasn't coming back. Toji's death, or murder, to be blunt, started what had seemed to be, to only Misato, a breaking point that only continued to get worse. Gendo, the one who caused the murder, had placed him under house arrest and constant surveillance until he saw fit to allow him to walk freely again. Kensuke hadn't spoken a word to Shinji since it became common knowledge that Toji was dead, and Hikari was quicker to ignore him than to speak even one sentence to him, as well. Rei was quiet, as always, while Asuka constantly took to berating him over what she claimed was a pathetic attempt to avoid the impossible.

Shinji checked his e-mails, only finding seven of them: Four from Asuka, with the other three from various students that spoke of disgust on him.

When the class had ended and the students had gathered their possessions, the teacher stopped Shinji before he walked out.

"Mr. Ikari," he spoke out, "you're wanted at the principle's office immediately."

Shinji sighed and went straight to the principal, not even curious to why he was wanted at all.

-x-

"…we're quite aware that you've been…gloomy over what happened to Mr. Suzuhara," the principal said to Shinji, having had to be reminded that he had mispronounced his name two times. "Have you tried talking about what happened to the counselor?"

Shinji nodded his negative, not believing that even counseling or regular therapy would help him get over what had happened.

"Your teachers and I all think you should take a couple of days off from school, just to clear your head," the principal had suggested. "We're really sorry about all of this, Kenji…"

"It's Shinji!" Shinji snapped at him, and then, not even noticing, the principal's desk moved to the left of the room as he got up and left.

_What in the world? _He thought, unable to believe that the desk moved, and that he nor Shinji had even laid a finger on it. _It must've moved, by at least, twenty inches._

-x-

"…They tell you to take a few days off over some nonsense?! Ha! You're the weakest link of everything, baka!" Asuka went, berating him again on their way to NERV HQ for their synch tests again. "What is the world coming to? If you're gonna be lying around at home for the next few days, you might as well make yourself useful…"

"Shut up, Asuka!" He snapped at her, losing his temper, and then, almost like before at school, something unexplainable happened: Asuka was lifted off her feet, and slammed against a nearby tree.

"Aaaaahh!" She yelled, feeling something in her right arm break. "Oh! Oh…my arm."

Feeling like a mild headache had rushed over his head, Shinji, instead of trying to help Asuka up to her feet, walked away to get help, leaving her alone.

-x-

"She's gonna wanna lay off that arm for about three weeks," said Ritsuko to Misato, through with examining the broken arm.

"Couldn't get much outta Shinji," she responded, sitting down in a nearby chair. "All he did was tell Asuka to shut up, and then she got slammed into a tree and broke her arm, like some invisible force grabbed her."

"Is that true, Asuka?" Ritsuko asked her, which earned a positive nod.

"He never laid a finger on me," she told them. "But it almost seemed like he wanted to."

-x-

_Everybody's being wrong to me, _thought Shinji, later in the evening in his room. _That man wouldn't even say anything to me on why he did what he did to me. He killed Toji! He killed him, and everybody blames me for it!_

Tap, tap, tap. He looked up at his desk and noticed his phone, floating in the air, tapping the top of it every now and then against the wall.

_Huh? _He was disturbed by this, feeling his head hurt a little as he got up, and went over to grab his phone. _It felt like an invisible hand was grabbing at it._

He let it go again and the phone floated above his head.

Knock, knock! Somebody was at his door.

"Shinji, are you asleep?" It was Misato.

"I'm going to bed now, Misato." He responded to her, reaching out to grab his phone, but his head started to hurt again.

Knock, knock, knock! The knocking made echoes in his head, making his headaches more painful.

"Shinji?" Misato uttered to him outside his room again.

"I said I'm going to bed now!" He shouted at her, and then, the whole apartment shook up, like an earthquake was occurring. "Whoa!"

Then, as soon as it came, it stopped. Misato, deciding to leave Shinji alone for the remainder of the day, went to her room and fell to sleep.

-x-

Shinji used to have a tendency to ask unnecessary questions to those that knew the answers to his questions, but today, he was searching for his answers through the Internet on his laptop, typing in various words to explain himself without much of a fuss: 'Things moving by themselves', 'unexplainable events', 'things that just aren't supposed to happen', and the like were what he typed down when searching various websites. Although he could've asked people that knew the answers to such questions he had, he had very little doubts of getting the right answers from them. So, with very little options, responses from a source that wasn't even alive was the next best thing. After half an hour of searching through various sites, he found one that had a better response to him. It was an outreach site dedicated to helping people, much to the beliefs and opinions of others, were capable of things that were, by normal means, never supposed to happen, such as lifting things without touching them or knowing what a person was thinking about them even when they never said it to them.

"_ESP: Extrasensory Perception. AKA, psychic abilities, ranging from telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, post-cognition, telekinesis (traditionally referred to as 'psychokinesis'), and so on." _He read on his screen. _People with psychic powers? That doesn't exist anywhere except…in…cartoons, movies, and such. And the site's got a piece where you type in what type of ESP you've experienced before. I guess I might as well see._

He typed in that things around him just happen to move by themselves and that one girl had broken her arm after being, seemingly, thrown against a tree by an invisible force. His response was that somebody was displaying telekinesis, the ability to move things with one's own willpower, around him. Or it could've even been he himself that caused the things to happen, either intentionally or unintentionally. But Shinji had some doubts on that. For as long as he could remember, the very events of things moving by themselves has always been by remote control or batteries to animate them. One of his worst experiences of something moving by remote had been the Eva itself when it killed one of his best friends.

_That man,_ he thought, feeling the aches in his head begin again. _I hate him! I hate him!_

Shatter! He looked up and saw some of the dishes he had recently cleaned fall to the floor, breaking upon impact. Then, as if responding to his current thought of having to replace them, they pieced themselves back together, as though they never shattered in the first place. Setting his laptop aside, he went to pick them up and found that they were perfectly normal like regular dishes, without a chip or crack in sight.

_Then…it's true,_ he thought, letting realization hit him. _I have telekinesis._

Reading more on the sight, he found various more answers to his questions on what telekinesis was capable of achieving: That with practice, one could move things that they wouldn't be capable of lifting, such as cars and crates, lift multiple people up into the air, stop cars right in front of them, and, to his horror, shatter glass, stop a person's heart, and potentially access other types of ESP. And that there was a case of one such person that was capable using telekinesis and had a mild case of telepathy. A girl named Carrietta "Carrie" White, who died in her teens after a large casualty of death and destruction in her hometown years prior to Second Impact, taking the lives of those that she felt had been wrong to her all her life. One of the dead casualties had been her own mother. The cause of her own death was questionable, either from a stab wound she received on the night of her school prom or from overuse of her psychic abilities. The only person of a few to have survived the horrid nightmare had been one of the schoolgirls that had, originally, in the beginning, been wrong to Carrie, as well, was Sue Snell, who died when Second Impact hit.

_I may have to keep this on a down-low,_ Shinji thought, unable to picture his life if everybody found out he had psychic powers of his own. _Can't really talk to anybody right now._

He clicked off the site and tried to find some news on the Internet, but still kept an open mind to look up more on ESP…and attempt to do what was mentioned on the site: Practice and harness this power.

-x-

"The Committee are beginning to doubt their reliance upon you and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ikari," Fuyutsuki told Gendo, reading the daily news as the younger, colder man played with his chess set. "They said something about a dangerous power being evoked. Not like the Angels, but, potentially, very deadly to the point of dooming the rest of the world."

"It doesn't matter. The scrolls don't tell everything. That'll teach the old men a thing or two." Gendo responded, moving a tile.

Crack! The sound of glass cracking caught their attention, and they turned to the windows, seeing a large crack on one of them. SHATTER! They all shattered into tiny pieces and fell, letting in a cold-but-low breeze.

Suddenly, Gendo's desk was pulled aside and sent smashing up against the ceiling, ruining the symbols of the Tree of Life there and then the ones on the floor. In a matter of seconds, his office was a wreck, like a monster had trashed what little of whatever he kept in there. Even his chess set was ruined.

-x-

"I guess that explains the headaches," sighed Shinji, going down an express elevator to the Geo-Front, looking up at where his father's office was located and just thought of simply wanting to trash his spot, never expecting that he would actually cause his spot to destroy itself with telekinesis…and actually make him feel a little better than he did after he found out about them. "I could probably ask Dr. Akagi to prescribe me some pain pills, but then, she'd probably get suspicious of why I would even need them at all. Oh, wait, what am I saying? I rarely even speak to her, so why would she become suspicious of why I would even ask for pills that deal with headaches?"

As he reached the ground level and got out the elevator, he wondered if, like this girl he read up a bit on, he was capable of other feats of ESP other than moving things…and what he could do with the other feats if so. In the comics and movies, psychic-powered people were even capable of flight and creating barriers of telekinetic energy, like members of the X-Men and other such groups. Could he do some of the things that they were capable of if he practiced enough?

_Shinji…_ A voice, in the back of his head went. _They are looking for me… Help me, please!_

"Hmm?" He went, looking around himself, and seeing nobody. "What… Who was that? Was there someone talking to me?"

-x-

"His scores don't look right," said Ritsuko to Misato, as they were participating in another synch-ratio test. "They keep rising and falling every now and then."

Misato looked at the score rating and then said, "Shinji, whatever it is that you're thinking about, stop thinking about it."

Shinji looked at her with a look of contempt and a voice going, _What does it look like I'm doing?!_ to them, sounding like Shinji's, but the problem was that he never moved his mouth to speak.

"Did…did you hear that?" Misato asked.

"I…I heard something…but I didn't actually hear it." Ritsuko replied. _What was that?_

The rest of the test went by silently until Ritsuko informed the children that they could go clean the LCL off and go home. Their scores were looked over by her and Maya, and Ritsuko had some doubts on Shinji's: Asuka's was still stable at where they were, Rei's were low, but still within the acceptable parameters or whatnot, but Shinji's were like some sort of infestation, constantly changing from high to low every so often during the whole test, like he couldn't focus properly.

_Surely, it can't have something to do with the last Angel attack,_ she thought, not really thinking about how badly he was affected by the death of his friend. _It was bad, but it could've been worse._

As she decided to take this up with Gendo, Shinji showered off the LCL on his skin, which, despite everything about it spoken to him, was just like blood. As much as he wanted to yell his lungs out at Ritsuko and Misato, he chose not to, letting his face answer them for him.

_Shinji…they are looking for me… Help me…_ The voice that had called out to him from earlier had spoken up again.

_That voice again, _he thought, the soap suds washing out of his hair. _Who is it that's calling out to me?_

After he was dressed in his school clothes again and walked out of the men's locker room, he crossed paths with Rei, whom, despite all the horrible things to have happened since his forced career of being an Eva pilot, hasn't tried anything wrong to him…yet. She looked the same as she always did, but the one thing that gave a hint at something being wrong were her eyes. Those deep, hollow, blood-red eyes that seemed to gaze off into the unknown.

"Ayanami," he calmly greeted her.

"Ikari-Kun," she greeted back. "How are you doing?"

"I don't really know," he answered her, not wanting to divulge on his new talents to her just yet. "I…I don't think we should be speaking to each other for the time being."

"Why?"

"Everything's changed. Things are just gonna get worse. There's no bright future, there's no happily ever after, there's NO waking up from this nightmare!"

His unintentional outburst caused one of the lights above their heads to shatter behind Rei. Unlike most people, who show fear and react by moving out of the way of something, even when it's not going to come or fall their way, she didn't move, even when the glass behind her fell to the floor.

"There's only darkness ahead…and more pain." He told her, and then walked past her to an elevator.

"It wasn't your fault," he heard her say to him, stopping in his tracks. "What happened to Suzuhara… wasn't your fault."

He turned to face her, and saw what looked like an expression of sadness on her face instead of a look devoid of emotions. Was she trying something on him because of that man? Trying to make him feel better about what happened during the last attack…or trying to make him feel worse about one of his best friends not coming back and pretending that he never left? As much as he wanted to believe her, his heart had hardened itself against the world. He didn't say anything after that, and left.

-x-

The night air wasn't calming for Misato, who had received a phone call from Shinji's school just recently from the principal, stating that if she believed in things, other than what her job presented twenty-four/seven, that were not supposed to happen at all, using Shinji's last day as an example.

_A desk moving twenty inches by itself when Shinji was present in the office?_ She thought, not knowing what to make of this. _Why do I get the feeling something like this has happened before? There was something in the media about something bad going on years ago, but what was it?_

And as though that weren't enough, Shinji, despite his house arrest and surveillance, hadn't returned home yet, while Asuka was spending time at Hikari's while her arm mended. She assumed that a lot of his current behavior was due to Toji being killed, and that he was having trouble sorting out his feelings caused by the death (or murder, as she was starting to believe herself).

"_It's not like he said 'no'." _Her own words repeated in her mind. _It's not like he said 'no', my ass. The only reason he even agreed to it was under the condition that his sister get better medical care. Wait a minute… His sister! Maybe she's still in the hospital. I'll see how she's doing tomorrow._

-x-

Taking a big risk and staying away from Misato's apartment tonight was, for Shinji, worth potentially getting caught by Section Two, Gendo's pathetic Men in Black, and taken straight back to NERV. Wandering around the grasslands away from Tokyo-3 was doing wonders for his mind: He was cleared of some of the negativity he felt while in the city, his heart had a better rhythm, and his respiration was calmer than ever. It was peaceful, and he enjoyed it. There were flowers, nocturnal animals that survived Second Impact, and quiet sounds that mirrored nature's early years before the technological advancement of Man paved over much of the lands.

_Is there anyone calling out to me, still?_ He thought, referring to the voice that was in his head every so often. _Is there somebody that actually cares enough about me to not want to use me and then discard me when I'm outta the way?_

_Shinji!_ The voice had called out again. _They're after me! I'm scared! Help me, please!_

Before he could even respond, somebody pointed a flashlight at his face.

"Shinji Ikari," a guy said, "as an agent of Section Two, I'm hereby sanctioned to take you to a NERV holding cell for breaking the orders of your house arrest. Come this way."

Instead, he ran off into the wilderness and kept on running, not trusting that a Section Two agent would come by himself. His belief was proven accurate, as he turned around and saw several agents coming after him. The woods were becoming less thick and he ran onto an open field before hearing the sound of a gun being fired.

"Hold your fire, dammit!" He heard an agent say. "He's to be taken in unharmed! Check your guns and make sure they're non-lethals only. Just paralyze him."

Shinji thought about using his new-found gift, but decided not to after recalling that ESP was capable of murder…and he didn't want to go down that path again. Other options he considered were trying to find a place to actually kill himself, throw in the towel and stop being an Eva pilot (mostly to get away from Asuka's constant abusing, but mainly to get as far away from NERV as possible and be free to decide his own future instead of having taken from him by his father, who pretty much represented the Devil himself), and trying to just outrun Section Two before they even managed to get him. Anything to avoid them and NERV.

BANG! He heard another gun being fired, and then he felt a stinging sensation in his left arm.

"Aaaahh!" He cried out as he fell to the ground. "Urgh! No!"

"We have the Third Child in custody," one of the agents said, as a few of them surrounded Shinji. "Sorry, kid. Nothing personal."

Then, suddenly, something just clicked inside Shinji, as he glared at one of them pointing a gun at his head, wishing that he would just scream as intense pain surged through his skin. His wish was granted in the form of fire just appearing out of nowhere, and covering the guy!

"Aaaaaauurgh! Gaaaaauurgh!" He screamed, feeling like his flesh was melting off.

"Fire! He's causing it!" One of the other agents gasped.

Shinji, despite his injury, rose back up to his feet and looked at them all, telling them, "I'm getting away from here. Don't try and stop me. I'm through with NERV." Then, he, telekinetically, floated up and away from the scene.

-x-

"Hold up! What do you mean, he set a Section Two agent on fire and left?" Misato questioned over the phone, as she stopped at the hospital to see if the Suzuhara girl was, hopefully, still there the next day. "Okay, I shall be there as soon as I can."

Entering the elevator, her thoughts of Shinji being violent toward people after him were anything but puzzling. He seemed so incapable of harming others when not in the Evangelion, but she took to not questioning his current state after what happened to Toji, because, after his death, she was willing to believe that Shinji was capable of just about anything now. But murder was something she refused to believe he was into now, for the burnt agent was still alive, but suffering from second degree burns allover his body as he was rushed to the hospital. So…whatever Shinji did to set him ablaze was simply meant to hurt the guy, not kill him. Her elevator stopped on the floor that the girl was placed on and she went over to where her room was located, but had to stop at the sight of Ritsuko, in the hall, with a bunch of men that, to her, looked like coroners, holding a folder in her hands.

"How could the girl just go missing?" She heard her say to the coroners. "It was your job to put her down when, and if, her brother died."

"We're sorry, ma'am, but some old guy got in the way and took her out before we could get to her," one of them responded. "Why do we gotta kill the girl? Wouldn't it be better to just let her go?"

"No. I got orders. If Toji Suzuhara was killed, his sister was be humanely disposed of." She told them.

Misato hid behind a corner, not understanding what was really going on, but didn't like what Ritsuko was saying about the dead boy's sister being disposed of like that. It was almost as bad as what she found down in NERV's basement: Adam, the First Angel (y'all know what it really is, though). And that Ritsuko would actually assist in murdering a little girl that was injured during the first attack was damaging her friendship with the woman even further. Before she knew it, she was walking back to the elevator to avoid seeing her face, needing to properly ingest this all.

-x-

Nabiki Suzuhara, the only daughter of Nadoko Suzuhara and little sister of Toji Suzuhara, hiding out with her grandfather, Soun Suzuhara, who was visiting her to explain that her brother was dead, had found some doctor about to stick her with a needle and kill her, and since then, have been in hiding to avoid the authorities. Nabiki, due to one of her head injuries caused by the Third Angel attack, had been misdiagnosed with a brain tumor that was actually a part of her brain that had given her mild, telepathic abilities, and the only people she tried using them to contact had been her father and the boy that her brother kept telling her about that was responsible for her past injuries: Shinji Ikari. She could remember that not so long ago, three days to be precise, a doctor had tried to do her in when her grandfather came to her rescue and got her out of there.

_Since when do doctors try to hurt you?_ She thought, lying in a bathtub of her still-undiscovered hideout. _Why would they try to hurt me like that?_

She had suspected that her grandfather hadn't been able to come back because, like her brother, he'd been killed by whoever was now after her to finish the job of making sure she was gone for whatever reason they had for wanting her dead. Her father, like always, was probably at work and had no clue his daughter was in hiding for her life. Or…hurting her heart to such a degree, he probably knew, but was too busy to even care, which would explain why he never even bothered to try and see her in the hospital when she got hurt.

_Why should a large gash on the stomach, an injured left leg, head trauma and a broken right arm be of any concern to anybody? _She thought coldly, wishing that somebody, like her brother, would simply just care about her well-being instead of trying to end her. _Somebody…please…just care about me and not want me dead. Please!_

_Shinji will come for you,_ she heard somebody's voice in her head now. _Shinji will come for you, so never give up hope. Keep sending him telepathic messages with your ability._

She looked up and thought that it was her own mother's voice talking to her, but another voice right behind it was also there, sounding like her brother. Were her mother and brother telling her to call out to Shinji with her telepathy?

-x-

Recovering from the shot Section Two inflicted on him, which was really just a flesh wound, Shinji felt like he hadn't been able to sleep much now after running. And, by a mere guess alone, assumed he was capable of pyrokinesis to go along with his telekinesis, and all he really did was think about the guy burning. Hiding in a cave he found, he prayed that nobody would come near it and be from NERV to capture him and take him back. Although, he'd nearly been driven to a breaking point more severe than when Toji was killed. It was like he was becoming a different person now that he discovered this power he'd acquired from out of the blue and tried to use it. The only bright side to what happened last night was that his headaches weren't so painful now, and only occurred whenever he was using his power. After he was done, they were gone, like they never came at all.

_Shinji, man,_ he heard somebody speak to him in his head again, sounding familiar to him. _Shinji, I need you to do something for me._

Opening his eyes, he looked in front of him and saw somebody standing near him: A boy his age, wearing black, athlete clothes. It looked like Toji…before all of the darkness took him.

"To…Toji?" He asked him.

"Yeah, bro, it's me."

"But you're dead."

"Yeah, that's true. I'm dead. You can't change that, but it wasn't your fault. It was your father's fault. Shinji, I need you to do something for me that I wish I could do myself. Do you think you can do it?"

"Maybe. What is it?"

"It's my sister. Somebody's after her… To kill her, simply because I'm dead now. Can you protect her for me, please?"

Shinji nodded that he would, but needed to know how and where to find her, since he could now tell that the girl wasn't in the hospital. Toji told him to let his sister's voice guide him to her, and he'd be alright, and then he faded from sight. Unsure of whether to view his dead friend as a ghost or an astral projection of the boy, Shinji decided honor his friend by going to get his sister and protect her from whoever it was that wanted her dead.

_What'd she ever do to deserve being marked for death, anyway?_ He thought, getting up and stepping out of the cave. _What'd any of us ever do to deserve death, anyway?_

-x-

When Misato got to NERV, she didn't like her orders from Gendo regarding Shinji: If, and when, he ever came back to Tokyo-3, she was to bring him back here for interrogation and testing to see if what he did was a result of the Twelfth Angel contaminating him, and that she was to shoot him if he resisted. It just didn't seem right. As far as one of the Section Two agents shooting him and then being set on fire, it reminded her of the old saying: _"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"_. The guy hurt Shinji, and Shinji hurt him, so now they were even. She couldn't really blame him for that. Lately, she couldn't blame him for anything that others have tried to blame him for. His other classmate, the one with the glasses and camcorder, hadn't shown up to see him (not even to greet her), like a wall was set between them.

_Is this a new game I was totally not informed about? 'Let's see who can make Shinji the most miserable person in the world'?_

Entering the Eva cages, she gazed up at Unit-01, completely different from the last time she'd seen it in action, yet still terrifying to her a bit. And after seeing the recording of what it did to the Thirteenth Angel while under control of the Dummy Plug, she couldn't stand to be anywhere near it for too long. The goal to find out what was to become of the Evangelions after the Angels were defeated was still cloudy. Kaji hadn't told her much after the last time they had a conversation.

"Major Katsuragi?" She turned to face Rei, who had just shown up out of nowhere.

"Rei," she greeted back.

"I need to ask you something."

"Oh. Go ahead."

"I'm not sure if there's an accurate answer, but… How many people have to die to save the world?"

That question caught Misato off guard. She had always expected Shinji to ask her a question like that, not Rei, but Rei did ask her, and she still had no definite answer for the question.

-x-

"…I guess the best place to look would be their house," said Shinji, standing in front of Toji's family apartment door. "Here goes."

He used telekinesis to unlock the door and let himself inside the house, lucky enough that he wasn't being followed or noticed by anybody. That wasn't much of a problem, since much of the city left in fear of the Angels. The place, although looking enliven, didn't show much of any emotion. Not even the last time he was here was there any peace or comfort that was really sought after by those with very little hope or praise. He checked Toji's parents' room (or just his father's room, since it was mostly his father being around the place the last time he was there), and felt something trigger in his head that didn't feel like a headache. Not even a hint of telekinesis.

_There was something on that site that said was related to ESP, but what was it?_ He thought, feeling something happen outside his mind. _Huh? What is this?_

The next thing he knew, he felt like he was in a black and white film, seeing a woman that reminded him a lot of Toji. He assumed the woman had to have been his mother before she died or something. She looked worried, and very unhappy about something. She was also on the phone, talking to somebody on the other end.

"Mrs. Ikari," he heard her say. "For the past month, I've noticed strange men in black coats following me and walking around outside my house lately. This happened right after I came back from the hospital with my new daughter. I've called the cops and reported about them, but I've seen no such change in their daily routine. Do you know what I should do? I'm thinking about leaving the city and moving the kids with me to Yokohama, but my husband is hesitant on doing so. Why he is, I don't know. Please, tell me it's just nothing serious."

It could've been a different Ikari, but Shinji had no doubts that the person she was speaking to was in fact his own mother, Yui Ikari, before she died. How they knew each other, he had no idea.

Flash! The scene was replaced with another scene, one with Toji's father and his mother, speaking to each other before they got set for bed.

"Tomorrow, I gotta go shopping for more food, darling love," Mrs. Suzuhara to Mr. Suzuhara, as she set two rollers in her hair before getting into bed with him.

"Okay, honey," Mr. Suzuhara responded, reading a book, not really paying any attention to her.

Flash! Another scene replaced it, and this one was a week after the death of Mrs. Suzuhara. Mr. Suzuhara was a complete wreck! Not even able to take care of his own daughter properly, requiring Toji to do most of that, even though he was only a little boy himself.

_Looks like I'm not the only person with an old man that walked away from his responsibilities,_ Shinji thought, as the scene faded back to the present. _Psychometry, the ability to perceive the past or future of an object, person or environment. Looks like the more I think about ESP, the more I start to evoke other abilities caused by it._

He then entered Toji's room and let his new-found psychometry show him the past in there. Toji, possibly sometime before or after he'd been selected to be the Fourth Child, was lying on his bed with a worried expression on his face. A woman's face kept popping up in his own mind, and one that Shinji knew too well during his former career as an Eva pilot: Ritsuko Akagi. She had been the one to convince him to become an Eva pilot under the condition that his sister received better medical care. All Toji told him was that somebody at NERV came to him and asked him to be a pilot, and now he knew who it was that asked him.

_I hate her…just as much as I hate them… _Shinji thought, leaving Toji's room and stepping into the living room before he decided to leave the apartment. _What is this grip of grief that envelops everyone that NERV and the Eva uses on them?_

Looking near a counter, he noticed a crudely-made stuffed animal that looked like a cat wearing a dress, and he went over to grab it. There was a tag on it that had a name: Suzuhara, Nabiki. This Nabiki must've been Toji's sister.

_Shinji…they are looking for me… Help me, please!_ The voice went again.

"Wha… Are you…Nabiki Suzuhara?" He asked out to the voice.

_Huh? Who is that? Is this…Shinji Ikari? _The voice asked back.

"I'm Shinji. I'm sorry about your brother, ma'am."

_It__…it wasn't your fault. It was never your fault._

"Thank you. I was told by your brother that someone's after you because he's no longer around, simply to… But you don't have to worry about that. I'll protect you from whoever it is. I have to protect you."

Shinji could've sworn that the girl sounded like she was crying, wherever she was hiding at, and he could feel her tears on his face.

"Nabiki…are you crying?" He asked her.

_Yes,_ she answered him. _My brother's voice, in my head, was right about you. He said that you would come, so I should never lose hope. I'll keep sending you telepathic messages._

"Where are you hiding? Where are you sending the messages from?"

_The Jade Maiden Hotel…in Tokyo-3._

"Alright. I'm coming there immediately."

_Shinji…I'm waiting for you._

-x-

Rei felt bad. It wasn't the first time she felt bad about something that was wrong, but it wasn't a feeling she was familiar with, personally. Her question of how many people had to die to save the world was answered with a simple answer from Major Katsuragi: "I don't know, Rei." She could've asked the Commander himself, but felt that he wouldn't have given an honest answer. The Second Child was also not a probable source for an answer, either, as Asuka was…just not the type of person to give a straight answer to anybody that may have asked her for one. Dr. Akagi also wasn't a good source, as well, which left Rei very few to ask her question and receive an answer that satisfied her.

As she was walking home, she wondered how Shinji was feeling at the moment, and if he was coping with Suzuhara's death on a lighter level. Stepping into her apartment, she fell onto her bed, pondering the dark events of what had happened to bring everything that was just so clear down a path of hurt.

Evangelion Unit-03 was gone, with no attempts to repair it, Units-00-02 were fully functional, awaiting deployment on the next Angel when it arrived, and the Dummy Plug was operational as of Dr. Akagi testing it and confirming its suitability for deployment against the Angels. Everything seemed to be going to the Commander's liking…except Shinji not being around to pilot Unit-01.

_Ikari-Kun…what are you thinking?_ She thought quietly to herself, gazing out the window, and seeing a large cloud that was, as odd as it seemed, shaped similarly to an Evangelion.

-x-

The rain brought some relief to Shinji, for it allowed him to travel a little in disguise, using a purple poncho and hoodie, as he walked through the streets of Tokyo-3 looking for the _Jade Maiden Hotel_ where Nabiki was hiding. Hardly any people were walking around in the rain, which would've meant that there would be less trouble if somebody went and started a fight with him.

_I'm not sure when we'll meet,_ he thought to himself, taking out the stuffed animal he took from the Suzuhara house, _but she's been in hiding ever since you died, calling for a savior, time after time, without any responses. The rain can't wash away everything that leaves a trace. People that hold cruel authority, and even crueler power, either want to capture, use or end the lives of others, and they probably want to know how I burned that guy from the other day while they just want to end your sister, Toji. I'm scared for Nabiki right now. I'm very scared._

He stopped in front of a large building that had a neon sign that read, _"Welcome to the Jade Maiden, where every moment is a treasure!"_ Then, he looked around to make sure nobody was going to notice a teen of fourteen years step into a place by himself, and walked inside. Unknown to him, however, a man in a raincoat, watching from the shadows across the street, saw him step into the building, and phoned the Geo-Front.

"He's at the _Jade Maiden Hotel_," he informed his superiors.

Inside, all seemed quiet. Not even a radio or television set was on. Shinji walked past a reception desk after seeing nobody there. Setting his poncho aside, he walked into the halls and entered an elevator.

"Nabiki?" He asked the stuffed animal, using it as a channel to communicate with Nabiki. "I'm here now. Where are you?"

But there was no response from the girl. Maybe it was possible that she was asleep, or even out of reach of him…or even dead, but Shinji, whatever the reason, would find her and protect her from harm.

"I never expected you to show up here, Shinji," he turned to face the man that uttered his name, seeing Mr. Kaji's unshaven face as he stepped out of the elevator when he reached the seventh floor.

"If you're here on NERV business that doesn't concern me, I'm not interested in conversing, and if you're here just to get on my case, I'm not interested in conversing," he told Kaji, and proceeded to walk away.

"Actually, I'm here for me," he told Shinji. "I'm trying to relieve some stress from the last few days. I don't go back into my job for another thirty-four hours. That's when I get my new assignment…and if it involves you in some way, then I gotta converse with you. Outta current curiosity, though, what brings you here, anyway?"

"I'm just here to meet someone I owe a favor to. It's to make sure said person doesn't get into trouble."

"Oh, well. Be careful, though. Some of the people have been saying that some ghost has been showing up around here and disappearing for the last few days."

Shinji didn't give even the slightest hint of disgust or amusement to hearing this, and walked away from him to go, as he himself put it, meet this person he owed a favor to. He hoped that this ghost that people here were talking about was just plain gossip or even Nabiki just sending her messages to people that weren't, probably, supposed to be receiving them. If it was just her, then once he got her out of the place and to a safe spot for her to properly recover, the whole thing about a ghost may just be left as gossip for people to speak of.

_Shinji…are you there?_ He heard Nabiki's message to him.

"I'm here, Nabiki," he answered, using the stuffed animal doll to respond. "Where are you?"

_The closed-down restaurant…in the basement._

"Okay, I'm coming down there right now, just don't go anywhere."

He went down to the basement and found that the restaurant that he'd been told about by Nabiki wasn't only closed down. It was completely abandoned: Dust piled up on tables and chairs, holes were in the floor, and there was very little light to see with. A few feet away from him was table that played the role of a pillow to a young girl that also reminded him of Toji, looking like she'd been dead for only a few, short minutes.

"Nabiki?" He called out to her. "Nabiki!"

The girl's eyes opened and looked at him, seeing his actual face for the first time, but couldn't muster any strength to give him a kind smile. Shinji could tell that she couldn't do so until she had recovered some more and went over to her. She slowly lifted her arms up and touched his face.

"Shinji…you're the only one that came to get me," she uttered. "I tried calling others…but nobody came. No one else would."

"But…what about your grandfather?" He asked, recalling that Toji informed him about their grandfather. "What happened to him?"

"He…he was trying to help me get away," she confessed, but had to lower her head again, exhausted.

"You seem so beat," she heard him say to her.

"I've been recovering and hiding…in many different places for the last few hours," he heard her tell him. "I don't understand why people want me dead. I didn't do anything wrong to anyone."

"It's okay. I'm gonna get you outta here right now."

"Shinji…thank you."

Slowly, he carefully lifted her up and held the little girl in his arms as he carried her out of the place. Shinji didn't like that his arms were a lot weaker than he originally thought they were, and Nabiki didn't really weigh so much. Probably only fifty or sixty pounds, give or take a pound or two extra. If he ever got to it, he would work out and build up his upper body strength, along with whatever other psychic abilities he had at his disposal.

_I heard your voice every time you called out to me,_ he thought silently, _and I didn't understand what it meant until a little while later, researching my abilities._

"Telepathy," he heard Nabiki say to him. "It's when minds unite…and become a single consciousness. It's as though we are always connected. There was a stinging sensation in your arm one time that I felt. If you suffer, I also suffer. It's mutual."

Shinji couldn't believe it. Her telepathy allowed her to feel his pain, even the night where a bullet cut the skin on his arm.

"I'm sorry, Nabiki," he apologized to her.

"It's okay. I forgive you."

-x-

"We have the whereabouts of the Third Child," an agent of Section Two reported to HQ through a cell phone. "He just left the _Jade Maiden Hotel_ with somebody and is walking east."

As the agent slowly started to follow them, Misato, unknown to all but Asuka, who was still extremely pissed off at Shinji when she came back to Misato's, was looking for him in her Renault in the rain, not because of her assignment, but because she was worried about him. As she drove around the streets, she pondered Rei's question from before, about how many people have to die to save the world. While she didn't have a definite answer, her own opinion was that not everybody had to die to save the world. Half the world died when Second Impact hit when Adam exploded and caused massive casualties. Another of her opinions was that humans were completely out of line when they decided to tamper with things that were best left alone.

_Just to fight the Angels, we use what we despise to save ourselves,_ she thought as she drove around two blocks three times. "Where are you, Shinji?"

Unknown to her, Shinji, taking another large risk, took Nabiki to the last place he expected himself to go back to: Misato's, aware of what waited there. But he needed to get her to a safe place at the moment…and some food in her stomach. Even when under the possibility that he'd be followed by Section Two agents, he would just use his abilities to drive them away from them…and maybe make Asuka get off his back as an added bonus. Stepping into the elevator and hitting the floor he wanted to stop on, he asked Nabiki if she was feeling any better since leaving the_ Jade Maiden_.

"A little," she responded. "Thank you again for coming to get me."

"Anytime," he chuckled, a little happiness returning to him, but only a little.

Once they reached the floor level they desired, he stepped off the elevator and headed for the door. He ringed the bell, hoping that Asuka would let them in, since he lost his keys when Section Two tried to get him.

_Asuka, please, let us both in,_ he thought bitterly.

After thirty seconds, the door opened and Asuka was present, frowning at him.

"Oh," she went. "You again (she then noticed Nabiki)… Who's that? Your girlfriend?"

Nabiki got behind Shinji. She had only just met Asuka, and, already, she didn't like her attitude.

"This is Nabiki, Toji's little sister," Shinji explained, and then they walked past the redhead. "Asuka, no harsh language from you right now. She's had a hard time out there."

"Define 'hard time', baka," she went, starting to get verbal again on him. "Misato went looking for you over two hours ago and you have to go back to NERV HQ for testing because of possible, mental contamination. The Twelth Angel may have screwed with your brain when you acted rather rashly in an attempt to show me up…"

"Asuka, that's enough," he uttered, getting angry with her again, and several mugs and crushed beer cans were starting to levitate off the counter and table. "I'm done with NERV. My concern right now is making sure Nabiki doesn't get hurt again like before. People were trying to kill her. She called for help, and I answered her calls."

"Why would people be trying to kill her?" She asked, not really caring why anyone would want to kill a little girl.

"Because my brother's dead," Nabiki spoke up. "He was…trying to get me better medical attention because he was worried about me. That's why he agreed to be a pilot to one of those things you use. Now that he's gone, they wanted me gone, too. My grandfather found out and tried to get me away before he himself was gone."

Later on, Asuka was in her room, trying to accept what she'd been told as an outright lie from a frail, little girl that was a relative of a jock she despised and could care less about now that he was gone. Shinji and Nabiki, on the other hand, were now in his room trying to recoup. She had praised Shinji on his cooking, claiming that it was similar to what her mother used to cook before she died, and that he could probably be a chef when he grew up. Shinji thanked her for her complement and was pleased to see that she was getting better. Nabiki had a behavior that was quite different from what Shinji had seen in other people: While he was mostly valued for his past ability to pilot an Eva, she simply liked him for him, and because he helped her…and had no apathy for his unintentional hand in the death of her brother. She didn't care about a giant construct that only those born after Second Impact could operate, and would rather flee to a safe place than to be inside one of them herself.

-x-

Misato drove back to her apartment and was about to call it quits when she felt the odd feeling that Shinji had, for some reason, come back here. She stepped into her home and went, "Shinji, are you here? Asuka?"

Asuka came out her room and went, "Misato, is it true that somebody was trying to kill the jock's sister because he was dead?"

Misato didn't know how she had found out about it, but stated that she found out about what she knew herself recently, but didn't want to be bothered by it right at the moment.

"Did Shinji come back?" She asked.

"Yeah," she answered. "He's in his room with the jock's sister right now."

The door to Shinji's room opened and out came Shinji, frowning at the ladies.

"I'm only here for tonight, and then I'm gone again," he explained himself.

_He's changed a lot,_ Misato thought, a bit disturbed by his tone of voice.

_You have no idea how much I've gone through in the last few hours,_ she heard Shinji's voice in her head. _I've found out a bit of things I'm only starting to get used to, like the fact that I have psychic abilities and feeling that I've only started to take back my life. If that man wants me back, only to pilot the monstrosity, he's outta luck. I have no intention of fighting Angels, anymore. Not if he's gonna try and make me kill another person, against my will, again._

"Shinji, there's no way I would make you do that again," she told him.

-x-

The following morning, Rei left her place, but not to go to NERV. She left to see if Shinji had gone back Major Katsuragi's. Something in her heart just told her to go there and check.

_Surely, he's there,_ she thought, approaching the building that the purple head lived in.

At the same time, Shinji was in the kitchen, cooking up breakfast. Even when he was going to leave again…or just flee to a different part of the country, it was just a habit of his to cook before he did something, which he sadly hated not doing every time he was injured or tasked with something else.

"Wark, wark!" He turned to the sight of Pen-Pen, waddling over toward him, but then taking a few steps back, as though he'd become a different person.

Unsure if telepathy was similar with animals than it was with humans, Shinji tried to speak with the mind of the penguin.

_You're afraid of me, aren't you?_ He asked him.

_You're bitter,_ he heard the penguin respond to him.

_I don't think you'll have to worry about that for long. I have no intention of coming back._

_That's a pity. I'd miss your cooking. I can barely keep Misato's down. You've tried her curry and should know how it tastes._

_Misato's the only one I know that can make even instant food taste terrible. You can actually understand me?_

_Yeah, I can. I don't see how you can actually speak to me like this now. Animals are, according to some people, telepathic. Or at least dogs and cats are. Rabbits and ducks are another thing altogether._

_I'm sorry. I've never spoken to animals before. Did you ever… I mean, do you try to talk to others often, if any at all?_

_No. Most people don't have the gift of understanding animals quite well as you do right now._

_I don't think it's a gift. I was doing research on ESP and, apparently, I have psychic powers, and I've been using them. I haven't properly practiced them, but I'm a bit skilled at telekinesis._

_Telekinesis?_

_I can move things, sometimes, without touching them._

_That explains why I saw beer cans floating last night when you came back. That redhead can drive a person crazy with that ego of hers._

"Heh-heh-heh! Yeah, she can do that without any effort." He laughed.

"Shinji?" They both heard Nabiki stepping into the kitchen from out his room, wearing one of Shinji's shirts that acted as a nightgown for her. "Who were you talking to?"

He confessed, "Pen-Pen. I was talking to Pen-Pen."

She looked over at the penguin and said, "Hello."

Pen-Pen waddled over to her and bowed his head. She raised her left hand and petted him.

"Looks like he likes you now," said Shinji.

"I've…never, ever seen a penguin before," she told him.

-x-

Misato was in a battle of the mind between doing what she knew had to be done…and refusing to do it completely. She had orders to bring in Shinji to the Geo-Front to see if he was contaminated by the Twelfth Angel, but would she really continue to put him through all of that pain relating to what he had come to despise because of his father?

_Forgive me, Shinji,_ she thought, checking the bullet clippings of her service gun.

-x-

Rei arrived to the front door and rung the bell, waiting for a response. The door opened and she saw a little girl that reminded her a little of Suzuhara.

"Hello," the girl said. "Can I help you?"

"Is there an Ikari-Kun here?" Rei asked her.

"Ikari-Kun? Oh, you mean Shinji? Yes, he's here."

After her sentence was said, Shinji appeared behind her and saw Rei. He welcomed her in as he was setting up breakfast.

"So, what brings you here, Ayanami?" He asked her.

"I was…worried about you," she answered him.

"You were…worried?"

"Yes."

"Thank you for worrying."

Time seemed to speed a little: They sat, they ate, Asuka complained a little, and then it was time to walk out the building and to perform their daily routines.

Nabiki had gone with Shinji to find some place to hide (or, in Shinji's mild case, some place where Nabiki would be able to live out her life without people wanting her dead because of her brother's death), Asuka and Rei left to school, and Misato went to NERV to try and call off Gendo's dogs that were after Shinji.

As much as she knew most of humanity's future rested on his shoulders, Misato refused to let him suffer another heavy loss because of it. He had suffered enough and deserved to walk away from this. And, as before, Gendo made it clear that he didn't view him as his son, only a pilot, and a spare, no less. It was degrading to hear that coming from him.

-x-

"Shinji, what do you think your father… I mean, that man's gonna do to you if he gets you?" Nabiki asked Shinji, as they walked down an empty street.

"Probably lock me away in the darkness," he answered her. "That or run tests on me to study my powers…or maybe try to force me to pilot the Eva again. But I won't let him. I don't want anything to do with him further. If another Angel does come, it's not my problem."

SWISH! A feeling of darkness caught the back of his spine in cold shivers, and he turned around to see if somebody was following them.

"You felt it, too?" Nabiki asked him, and they both got the idea to walk a little faster now.

Before they could even reach the train station and get on a train leaving the city, Shinji felt something tiny struck him in the neck, sending him falling to the ground.

"Aaahh!" He gasped.

"Shinji!" Nabiki cried, seeing a dart on his neck, and seeing a man in a black suit with a rifle aimed at them. "Shinji! Please, wake up!"

As the man approached them, Shinji recognized him as one of Section Two's agents from the last time he saw them, and tried to rise to his feet again.

BAM! The agent struck him in the head with the butt of his rifle, and did the same with Nabiki.

"We have them both in custody," he said over his phone.

-x-

Misato couldn't believe what had happened! Gendo had Section Two agents watching her apartment in the anticipation that Shinji would return there and make an attempt to capture him if she couldn't (or wouldn't), and he might've been manipulating her actions without her knowing. She knew better than to believe him. There's no possible way that Shinji would try to control her. It just didn't seem like his sort of thing. Now that Shinji was placed in a holding cell and sedated, he'd been removed from her responsibilities, along with Nabiki being put in a separate holding cell just because she was with him when they tried to leave the city. She had to think of a way to help them, if there was a small chance that they were both alive, still.

Heading to see Ritsuko, Misato had to let her temper be vented out against her former friend from college and find out what they planned to do with the little girl.

_If it is execution, God help me that it doesn't come to that._ She thought as she stepped onto the bridge, where Ritsuko was busy typing codes down on one of the keyboards. "Ritsuko, we need to talk."

Ritsuko stopped her typing and said, "I guess you heard about Shinji and the Suzuhara girl he was with, haven't you?"

"Yes…and her name's Nabiki. What's to become of her?"

"For now, she's just being detained."

"Detained? Isn't that a little harsh? She hasn't even done anything wrong."

"Orders came from the Commander. He doesn't believe the girl is innocent."

"And what of Shinji?"

"He's also being detained…and sedated to keep him from trying any of what he previously did to that Section Two agent the last time they tried to bring him in."

"It was self-defense, Ritsuko! The guy shot at him."

-x-

The Nevada NERV branch was a complete deadzone. Barren, desolate, no shred of life clung to its sands. Ever since the Unit-04 incident, everything and everyone had been taken by whatever had caused the facility to disappear, never to be heard of again. Or so people thought. The ground began to shake, tremors of sand swirling in the earth, and then a large, whitish-silver hand burst from the fluid-like surface of tiny stone fragments. Another large hand came right after, and a head, the same shade of chrome and with two glowing red eyes.

"Aaaaaaaaaaauuuuurgh!" The roars of the previously-believed-to-be-gone-forever Evangelion Unit-04 roared, as it pulled itself from out the would-be grave it had been placed in. "Grrrrrr!"

Turning its head toward the east, it raised its large legs and started to, slowly-but- steadily, walk toward its newly-chosen destination.

-x-

Nabiki laid on the small cot of her cell, wondering what had become of Shinji, and wondering if they were both going to be cut lose from this organization that had caused her brother and grandfather's death. Her fears of being thrown in jail simply because she didn't want to be killed by people that wanted her dead wasn't so foul-minded to think of, but after thinking further on what these people could do with her like what they were probably doing to Shinji right this minute was enough to make her cry herself to sleep.

_Shinji, _she tried using her telepathy to reach out to him. _Are you alive? Shinji…where are they keeping you? Please, speak to me!_

But no response came back to her. Shinji was either someplace where he couldn't hear her thoughts…or was among the dead like her brother and grandfather now.

"Shinji…" She whimpered, a tear escaping her eyes. "I'm sorry."

-x-

"Who are you?" Shinji asked, dreaming of something that never made sense to him (much like his nightmare of himself running on a highway at night in a patient garb, trying to get away from an Eva that had no armor on itself), right at a woman that reminded him a bit like Rei because of her appearance and aura. "You look familiar, but, at the same time, you don't."

"I'm Yui Ikari, your mother, Shinji," the woman answered him, but it didn't bring any relief to his devastated psyche. "Believe it or not, I'm the driving force behind the Eva project, Unit-01…and the one who gave your psychic powers."

Instead of being calm and friendly, Shinji became enraged and hostile toward her.

"You? You're the cause of all of the terrible things that happened to me?! I lost one of my friends to the Eva, that bastard walked out on my life, called me back to act as his puppet, caused my friend's death, and now I find out that you gave me this power! For what purpose?! For who, for what?!"

"To help you see how bright the future will become soon." Yui told him.

Shinji frowned. It looked like his father wasn't the only crazy person he'd come to despise. Now, he had a reason to despise this woman that claimed to be his mother.

"Shinji, everything happens as it must," she told him. "Everything I've done, I've done for you."

"And what, you expect me to thank you?" He asked her, his temper boiling in his head. "You…and that bastard of a man you married… You're both insane, and all you've done is brought madness to the world. I don't even know who you both are, anymore, not that I ever knew who you were to begin with. You've both left me in darkness, exploited me against my will, and I guess you want me to continue to go along with whatever it is that doing, huh? No way."

At that moment, Yui had vanished, replaced by the collasal Unit-01, its eyes flaring red and its arms stretched out to reach him. Shinji allowed himself to be grabbed by the Eva, and just waited for it to crush him to death like it did with Toji.

"Everything happens as it must, Shinji," her voice told him. "It was meant to be. It's all in the past, and we cannot undo what has already happened."

"Maybe so, but I can undo the future by doing things I couldn't do before, and one of them is taking back my life and getting away from the Evangelions," he told her, feeling his muscles getting crushed by the large fist. "I refuse to be a pawn in this crazy scheme of yours. I don't even care who you are, anymore. My parents are dead to me. If the Angels want to end the world, I'm more than happy to stand aside and watch the Armageddon take place."

The Eva was about to crush him until his head fell off, but then something else happened: Another pair of giant hands grabbed the wrists of the opposing Eva and crushed them, freeing him.

Shinji looked behind him and saw another Evangelion, one that was silver and white, reminding a little of the late Unit-03. It grabbed him and, instead of ending him in this nightmare, it set him atop its left shoulder and ran away from the injured and grotesque Eva that nearly killed him. He couldn't understand why it would do such a thing for him.

_Shinji, you and Nabiki must live,_ a strange voice uttered in his head. _Not to assist anybody in anything, but to seize your own future. Not everybody is granted this much of an opportunity to rebel against an already-decided upon destiny, but you and she are more special than you can possibly imagine._

"Who are you?" Shinji asked the voice, feeling his nightmare fading away.

_Someone rebelling against the cruel of heart, just like you, but for reasons not as important as yours are. You can trust me to help you against those that will be coming after you._

Shinji wasn't sure whether this voice was honest or insane, but he felt one thing right about the person that kept the voice: They were sincere and willing to aid him and Nabiki in getting away.

-x-

Asuka was glad to be out of the cast after three long weeks of wearing it while her broken arm mended. And her synch ratio climbed up a bit ever since Shinji was placed in a holding cell and constantly sedated to prevent him from trying to get away from NERV. But what really freaked her out was what Ritsuko revealed: While it had been confirmed that he wasn't contaminated by the Twelfth Angel, Shinji had manifested a wide range of ESP, which granted him the abilities of telekinesis, telepathy, and pyrokinesis. Toji's sister had also been confirmed to have telepathy, as well, merely from doing what she was doing ever since her grandfather tried to get her away from the hospital, calling out to Shinji, who was the only person to respond to her calls for help.

_They say in the old textbooks that ESP is a genetic disorder, _she thought, participating in another synch test again with Rei. _At first, scientists thought the ESP gene was carried by a person's father, until it was discovered at the dawn of the Twenty-first century that everybody that displayed a degree of psychic abilities carried the gene, not just a person's father, but their mother, as well. Looks like the Third Child isn't so great, anymore._

As the test continued on, Ritsuko and Misato were conversing again.

"Looks like Asuka's score has risen up again," Ritsuko revealed.

"Ever since Shinji was detained, she's been in a brighter mood," Misato confessed, not really pleased about Shinji being restrained against his will and being studied because of his psychic abilities…or Nabiki being held a prisoner on the compound because she was with him.

_It's like all they have now is each other,_ she thought bitterly. _Commander Ikari sees nothing of worth in his own son, his wife is gone, the girl's brother, mother and grandfather are gone, and her father's too busy to worry about her. What is with people with children these days?_

Before she could finish her thought, an alarm went off and that meant possible danger.

"What now?" She wondered.

"Something's coming this way!" Maya Ibuki shouted.

"Is it an Angel?" Ritsuko demanded.

"No A.T. Field or blue pattern confirmed," Makoto Hyuga responded, bringing an image up on the main screen. "What in the name of…"

Everyone was in a state of shock, for the image in front of them that was approaching the city…was Evangelion Unit-04, covered is dust and seaweed.

"Unit-04?" Misato gasped.

"But that's impossible," Ritsuko went. "It was lost when the NERV branch in Nevada disappeared."

"Well, it's back again. Who's politing it?"

"It's unmanned," Hyuga revealed. "There's no plug in it."

On the screen, Unit-04 stopped walking and stood there for a moment, as if it had run out of energy or was just contemplating its next move.

-x-

_Shinji. Nabiki. I am here. _A voice that had been communicating with Shinji as he had been stuck in his realm of dreams for days had returned, speaking to both keepers of the ESP gene at the same time, catching their attention. _The time has come to liberate you._

Nabiki, strapped to a guarney in one of the examination rooms, woke up to the sound of a voice that brought a sense of relief to her. At the same time, Shinji, despite being constantly sedated, woke up in a normal, groggy fashion, strapped to cot in his cell.

_Nabiki,_ he tried to call out to the girl he'd been separated from, but his telepathy felt weak, probably due to being drugged by the doctors. _Nabiki…can you hear me?_

_Shinji?_ A response came back from the girl. _Shinji! Are you alright?_

_A little groggy, but I'll live,_ he told her._ Did you hear that voice?_

_Yes. Who was it?_

_Somebody rebelling against destiny, just like we are._

-x-

Once Unit-04 became aware of what it needed to be aware of, it jumped up and slammed down into the ground of the city, creating a hole it used to reach into the Geo-Front's outer-interior, landing in the massive forest portion of the structure. It looked over at the massive, metal pyramid that was NERV HQ and approached it.

Deep in Central Dogma, Gendo ordered that Rei be sent out in Unit-01, with a Dummy Plug as a backup along with Asuka in Unit-02 to intercept the rogue Eva. It didn't seem like the type of battle to start against something that wasn't acting or behaving like the Angels. Unit-04 had no plug and was expanding no A.T. Field, so it was just a moving doll, an animated automaton that was probably following an emergency program that was placed in it.

-x-

Rei sat in the plug of Unit-01, ready to go deal with the rogue Eva, but then had to gasp and cough, for something was wrong.

"Unit-01 is rejecting the First Child," Maya told the Commander and Sub-Commander. "It won't let her get past the startup point."

Meanwhile, Asuka, in Unit-02, was outside protecting NERV HQ from the approaching Evangelion, armed with the big toys.

"Take this!" She shouted, firing round after round of pellets at the silver Eva, feeling the battle wouldn't take so long on account of the enemy not having an A.T. Field to protect itself.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Even without one, it still had twelve-thousand plates of fortified armor, more than enough at the moment to compensate the lack of a defensive barrier. And what's more was that the silver Eva wasn't even interested in fighting with the red Eva, but the girl piloting it was in its way of performing its job.

The pellet rounds just bounced off the Eva's body, and when Asuka ran out of rounds, the silver Eva took advantage of her need to grab another weapon, and lept at her Eva, grabbing its arms and tossing it aside before grabbing a rocket launcher and aiming at the pryamid structure. BAM! A rocket was fired and the pryamind was damaged by a big hole on the side. It was big enough for the Eva to get through and reach its destination faster. After looking back at Unit-02, it tossed the weapon and watched it strike it in the head, hopefully giving its pilot a headache before it jumped into the hole.

Asuka grabbed the rocket launcher and chased after the Eva, firing a rocket at the thing's back, but missed by the fact that they were in a large shaft going down, right toward the Eva cages.

Rei, once she'd been sortied out in Unit-00, grabbed pellet rifle and entered the cages to assist Unit-02, seeing that Unit-01 was not going to activate with her. She fired a few rounds at the Eva's head, but that didn't stop Unit-04 from moving. Not even shooting it in its legs was making it stop.

Unit-04, irritated by the blue cyclops' attempts to stop it, approached it and kicked it in its abdomen, sending it falling backwards onto the ground, after which it raised its left leg up and dropped it onto its right leg, crushing it.

"Aaaaaaaaahhh!" It heard its pilot scream in agony, and it took its foot off the blue Eva and moved on, believing that it wouldn't try to interfere with its journey.

But when Unit-02 came back and fired another rocket at the silver unit, a dark and foreboding anger rose up from within Unit-04.

"Aaaaaaauuurgh!" It roared over at the red Eva, and charged at it.

Asuka tried to fire two more rockets until she realized her weapon was now empty of its payload, and discarded it to extract her Progressive Knife to defend herself. Now, with her knife in hand, she blocked the arms of the rogue Eva and tried to stab its ass, but the Eva's strength, which was unusually surprising, was way superior to hers as it forced the knife out of her grip, falling onto the ground.

_This can't be possible!_ She thought, feeling the Eva grab her throat. _There has to be somebody piloting this thing! Unit-03 couldn't even fight like this without being possessed by an Angel!_

She thought that the Eva was going to kill her right then and there, but gasped when she saw that it was going for her Progressive Knife, and stabbed her in her right arm.

"Aaaaaaaahhh!" It heard her scream, but it didn't stop there, and stabbed the red Eva's left leg. "Aaaaaaahhh!"

Purple blood flowed out of the two limbs as Unit-04 got up and looked down at the now-damaged Eva, and then decided that it and its pilot weren't going to bother it any further and walked onward to its destination, the knife still in its right hand.

-x-

After managing to get off the gurney and out of the room he was placed in with his telekinesis, even when he'd been severely weakened by the massive amount of sedatives in his system, Shinji was slowly staggering out in the hall, trying to find the room Nabiki had been placed in before the whole of NERV found out he was loose and looking for her. Slowly shaking off the effects of the drugs, he felt his physical strength returning and his telepathic link with Nabiki returning, as well. It seemed like it was to be smooth sailing ahead for them, but then he heard the intercom system in the hallway go, "Evangelions Unit-00 and Unit-02 have been defeated by Evangelion Unit-04. Attempting activation of Unit-01 through the Dummy Plug." It was the words of the Dummy Plug that made Shinji much more bitter at the Evas and his father, but he let it subside, as this had nothing to do with him, anymore.

_Nabiki? _He called out to the girl with his telepathy.

_Shinji,_ came her response. _What's going on out there?_

_The Evas are fighting again._

_Is it another of those Angels again?_

_No, they said it was Unit-04._

_Unit-04?_

_An Eva that was built alongside Unit… The other Eva._

He stopped by a door where his bond with the girl felt strongest and entered its room, seeing her incapable of getting off the gurney since she was strapped down.

"I knew you'd find me," she said as she shed a few tears.

He went over and started to unstrap her from the gurney, determined to get them out of the Geo-Front and as far away from NERV as possible again. Nabiki, once freed, hugged him compassionately as they both walked out of the room and ran down the hall to find a way out of the facility. Another alarm went off, and it meant more trouble for them.

"The Third Child has escaped from his cell," somebody said over the intercom. "Orders are to find and recapture him. I repeat, the Third Child has escaped from his cell. Orders are to find him and recapture him. Unit-01 still rejecting the Dummy Plug."

With that new information, they heard footsteps approaching as they started to flee again.

"Found him!" A guy had yelled out. "He's trying to escape with the girl! Stop them!"

"Hey, man," Shinji yelled back at him, "I'm not the Third Child, anymore! This isn't my war!"

BANG! The sound of a bullet made Nabiki gasp and pick up her pace as they ran further down the hallway, terrified of being harmed any further by these people or just killed by them because of her past experience with them wanting her gone, and over three weeks ago, she was barely in a stable condition, and now she was in perfect health, with all of her injuries mended quite well.

"Stop!" They heard another man shout at them. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

But they didn't stop, and ran around a corner…and another corner…and another corner after that. Unknown to Shinji's sense of direction, they were taking the path of least resistance…right toward the Eva cages, where the fights had taken place.

-x-

Unit-04 stopped its advance and stood in front of one of the railings that was near an umbilical bridge, the feeling of having its desires realized becoming stronger than they used to be.

Seeing two kids run out onto the railing caught its attention, and it turned to see them.

Shinji and Nabiki gasped, seeing the silver Evangelion for the first time. While Nabiki was worried that they would be harmed by it, Shinji was disturbed that several feet away from the Eva was Asuka's Unit-02, beaten and bleeding from two of its limbs, and that its Progressive Knife was in the hands of Unit-04, and even further away was Rei's Unit-00, also damaged by the silver Eva.

"Shinji, we have to go back the other way!" Nabiki tried to reason with him.

_No!_ They both heard somebody say to them through telepathy. _Please, wait! Listen to me! I'm not going to hurt you!_

The Eva leaned forward to meet face-to-face with the two, its soulless gaze seemingly-filled up by their presence and everything.

_Are you… Are you Unit-04?_ Shinji asked the voice, trying to control himself in front of the Eva.

_Yes,_ it revealed. _I'm the one you call Evangelion Unit-04, the one supposedly lost through an experiment that took the lives of thousands because the heartless could care less for the innocents of this world. But I wasn't lost, merely buried beneath miles of sand…and consumed by the need to be free from destiny, the same as you two._

"Why are you trying to help us?" Shinji asked it.

_Because I don't want the world to suffer at the mistakes of people trying to bring about the end of it. Most people don't know this, but everything they think they know about what the organization, NERV, stands for, is an outright lie. True, they aim to stop the Angels from instigating Third Impact, which would also remove humans from existence, they themselves aim to bring it about, trying to become a rival of God, which is absolutely forbidden to attempt. They set their scheme up through an old set of tablets known as the…_

"The Dead Sea Scrolls," Shinji cut it off, recalling what Kaji had told him. "They're supposed to have the entire history of mankind."

_If they can't tell the history of what is happening right this very moment, that I'm here, conversing with you, intent on helping you break from this chain that is a destiny that was unforgivably forced upon you, then, there's nothing they have that is concrete. An Evangelion, a bogus copy of the First Angel known as Adam, able to act independently of any child manipulated into piloting it, and having no soul that was given to it by the sacrifice of another person, wishing to break free of its own chains because it doesn't wish to end the world. I fought two Evas and disabled them, sparing their pilots but making sure that they can't get back up to fight again. I'm not a killer…and neither are you, Shinji. If there is anyone's hands that are stained with blood, it is the ones wishing to end the world._

Nabiki, although against the Evangelions, didn't sense any hostility from this particular one, and believed that it could, definitely, be trusted.

"Shinji, I think we should go with it and get outta here," she told her savior.

Shinji, although still despising the Evas, couldn't really despise this one for what it was originally made to do and see that it was willing to go against what was believed to be destiny, and said, "You…you get Nabiki and I outta here, we work together, figure out what to do about everything…can I trust you won't hurt Nabiki?"

_I promise you,_ it told him in response, _I won't hurt her…or you._

Nodding his head, he answered, "Okay. Let's get outta here."

Unit-04 extended its right arm out near the rail and watched the two children climb aboard. When some security came and saw them, it immediately turned to flee. It would stay true to its word and make sure that they wouldn't be harmed.

"We got a problem! The Eva has the Third Child and the girl!" They all heard a man say to somebody else over a phone as the Eva went to the shaft it came down in.

"Hold onto me, Nabiki!" Shinji told the girl, as she held onto him with all she had.

"Rrrrrrrrrraaaaaaurgh!" They both gasped and turned to the sight of what was definitely bad for them right now.

-x-

Even though it was still rejecting the Dummy Plug, Unit-01, against all possible theories, started moving on its own, and went to meet its production-modelled relative that was also acting on its own.

Unit-04 frowned at the sight of something so much like itself, but at the same time, not like itself. They were nothing alike in certain ways: Both had the same build but their origins were different, while the purple Eva had a soul in its core, the silver Eva had no human soul at all, being what could've been described as a purely-sentenient creature that had been warped to suit the desires of people destroying the world, and was made in a matter of months instead of years like the first three. And donor-wise, its biological source had been the First Angel. Unit-01's source had been the Second Angel.

Unit-04 made a step closer to the shaft, but Unit-01 imitated it and took a step closer.

Nabiki and Shinji saw this a warning: If Unit-04 tried to leave, Unit-01 would just come after them. It was a complete standoff, with it appearing to be the purple Eva being the one in control. Or was it even a standoff between them?

"Unit-04?" Shinji told the silver Eva, trying to think of a way out of this. "We may have to take a risk and fight Unit-01."

Unit-04 looked at him and said, _But I can't risk harming you two._

"I have a small doubt that Unit-01 will want to endanger me."

"Why wouldn't it?" Nabiki asked him.

"Because that ugly thing has my mother inside it."

Nabiki didn't want to believe that, but her heart told her differently: The purple Eva had the soul of a person driving it, but her heart also told her that it was just a woman that really didn't know much about being a parent because she'd been inside a large abomination for a long time.

_Everything happens as it must,_ she heard a woman's voice through her telepathy, _nobody can fight fate._

The girl couldn't even describe the woman's voice as sweet and nurturing, mainly due to the fact that it came from something that sent her brother to the afterlife against his will.

"Shinji… I don't like the lady that's stuck inside that monster," she told him.

As Unit-01 growled more ferociously at them, Unit-04 lowered its arm to the ground and set the children down, hoping that they wouldn't be endangered if it cooperated a bit for Unit-01.

_Wish me luck,_ it told them.

"Unit-04…please, come back in one piece," Nabiki told it.

"Don't get killed by her, please," said Shinji to it.

With that, Unit-04 charged against the purple enemy and locked claws with it. Unit-01 could've told this semi-untested shell that it had a high record of Angel kills which made it the best fighter that it was for NERV, that the silver one stood no chance against it, but decided it was best to demonstrate why it was valued more than the rest put together.

_Why are you really helping them? _It asked the silver Eva.

_Because I don't want to be a tool, anymore,_ it answered. _I wish to see a world where happiness can be achieved without the need to sacrifice the world. The needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few. Shinji and Nabiki… They are members of the many. You and NERV…you're just members of the few, and I will not let you harm them to justify your own goals._

_The girl is of no use to us, but we need Shinji._

_Your requirement of Shinji isn't a need, it's a want. You want him as a pawn, your tool__… You don't want him as a person, ally or friend. You don't really care whether he lives long or not to obtain a happy future he can be proud of._

_Like you do?_

_I do care! Ever since I felt his mind screaming for as long as I can recall the day the place I was manufactured went away, piloting us abominations has done nothing but hurt him. The girl that pilots the red Eva abuses him to no end, even when things that happen aren't his fault, his father never acknowledges him as a person, and you allowed one his friends to die._

Unit-01 then kicked Unit-04 in its head and sent it falling to the ground.

_Everything happens as it must, and quite frankly, we're all doomed to the Third Impact that will happen soon._ Unit-01 told it, as it looked down to see Shinji and Nabiki trying to get away. _Not so fast, Shinji Ikari. Don't you dare run away from me!_

But before she could reach down to snatch the pair up, she received a surprise: A large hand grabbed her left leg, stopping her.

Unit-04, recovering from the last attack, prevented Unit-01 from trying to get the children as they ran away from her. And then pulled her to the ground and climbed atop her to punch her lights out.

-x-

Able to find an alternate escape route through another hallway, Shinji and Nabiki found an elevator and took it to the top floor, hoping to outrun NERV's security and Unit-01.

"They're gonna get us, they're gonna get us," Nabiki, terrified, chanted.

"We're gonna be fine," Shinji reassured her. "We're gonna be fine."

The elevator stopped and the doors opened, revealing an empty hallway that they stepped into, looking for the nearest exit.

BANG! The sound of a bullet hitting the wall in front of them prevented them from running any further and turning around to see who their obstacle was this time.

"I'm afraid there's no escaping permitted," said Gendo, pointing a gun at them.

Shinji frowned, unable to believe that this man nearly shot at them. If his telekinesis wasn't so waek right now, he'd taken the gun from him and reduce it to pieces before running out of the facility with Nabiki and getting as far away as possible.

Nabiki, not by her telepathy, but by her young intuition, saw that this man was willing to do just about any type of foul play to keep them from leaving, even murder them, and knew, then, that this was as impossible to accept as a person than it was easy to accept him as a monster. Some sort of puppet master with a pact with Lucifer, intent on making everybody's lives as miserable as his was.

_I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, _her mind chanted.

Then, Shinji got an idea: Recalling that night where he set a Section Two agent on fire, he tried to concentrate on his pyrokinesis, trying to set the hand that held the gun on fire, figuring his father would be used to having burnt hands since they were burnt months ago.

_Mother is crazy… Father is crazy… They've both done terrible things… They left me to suffer, brought me here to this city to suffer, took one of friends and drove the others away… And now they want Nabiki dead to hurt me even more. I promised Toji that I would protect her, not because I have to…but because I want to._ He thought, still determined to take back his life and get away from this.

Gendo was thinking he had everything under his control since he had the gun in his hand. As long as he kept it aimed at them, or, put quite simply, at the girl, Shinji wouldn't think to try anything without jeapodizing her safety. He was about to pull the trigger and put a cap in the girl's right leg until he felt the gun handle heat up. It became so hot that he couldn't hold it any longer and let go, watching it melt into a puddle!

"Aaaauurgh!" He growled, flexing his fingers as the pain in his nerves signalled to his brain.

Shinji felt a little relieved when the gun was no more. It made escaping a little bit easier.

Nabiki felt relieved, as well. Without the gun, Gendo didn't seem so much like a dangerous threat to them, anymore.

Then, Shinji set fire to the floor in between them, keeping Gendo at bay.

"Come on, Nabiki," he then said. "Let's go now."

She followed him out the door and they were out in the wilderness that housed no real life.

-x-

BAM! Unit-01 was punched so hard by Unit-04 that her head armor's horn piece broke off. Unit-04 had managed to knock her out and come out a victor, proving, in its own right, that it was determined to fight destiny.

_This…has got…to stop,_ it thought, getting up and leaving the cages. _Shinji, Nabiki, I'm coming for you now. Please, be alive._

Climbing up the shafts, it reached the surface of the Geo-Front, free of any more obstacles meant for it. The sunlight becoming less as the day was ending and night approaching.

_Shinji? Nabiki?_ It called out for them with the telepathy.

_Unit-04?_ It heard Shinji's response. _We're down here by the trees._

It looked down at the woods and saw two bodies by the trunks. Crouching down to get a better view of them, it found who it was looking for.

_Nobody's dead,_ it told them. _Unit-01 probably has a headache and they're going to be out of action for a time. We…should probably be going now._

"But where to?" Nabiki asked, willing to go as far as they were. "None of us have a home to go back to, and the rest of the world will probably be looking for us."

"We'll find someplace to hide at for now," Shinji told her. "We should lay low for a few days."

-x-

When SEELE found out that Unit-04 was back, they were less than thrilled by its actions against NERV and the Evas. That it was after the Third Child and a little girl he was with that was the sister of the former Fourth Child, fought and defeated Units-00, 01 and 02, and that it could function without a pilot and, as far as anybody could understand, had no core or S2 Engine to grant it an independent source of power, that it was just moving and thinking by itself.

"How is this possible?" The seventh member of the SEELE committee asked. "The Eva Series can't function without a pilot, Dummy Plug or source of power for its needs."

"This is what happens when we use things that we don't fully understand," the third member said. "It may have something to do with the way it was tested for the S2 Engine recovered from the Fourth Angel. It may have been contaminated."

"No, it was checked and cleaned of any abnormalities," said Kiel to them. "What about the Third Child and the sister of the Fourth Child?"

"They've disappeared…with Unit-04," the the eigth member explained. "After leaving the Geo-Front, they just dropped off the map."

"How does an Evangelion, something as tall as skyscrappers, just disappear?" SEELE's tenth member asked them.

"With the exception of Unit-01, all other Evangelions are copies of the First Angel, Adam, who had powers beyond our understanding," the ninth member responded. "Who knows what this rogue Eva's capable of? It may have some sort of teleportation ability."

"We may have to try and take back the rogue Eva in order to see why it's capable of what it does," the fifth member suggested.

-x-

Hiding in a large forest away from Tokyo-3 (and big enough to hide Unit-04 when it crouched down), Shinji and Nabiki sat in front of a small fire as they ate some fruit they were able to acquire from the trees around them. It had been three days since they left the city, and they had yet to make any sort of plan of action against NERV and the ones that wronged them and the world.

"Shinji?" Nabiki asked her savior, finishing her recent banana.

"Yes?" He asked back to her, still eating his current apple.

"Thank you again for saving me," she praised him.

"Don't mention it," he thanked her back.

The night air brought an unwelcomed aura of danger to them, but luckily, Unit-04 was acting as a guardian for them, being on the lookout for any creatures that invited possible danger. It was probably an easy task for it, since it didn't sleep.

Later in the night, as Shinji and Nabiki slept, Shinji tossed and turned in his sleep, grunting as Unit-04 heard and wondered what was wrong, and then noticed that some rocks and twigs were rising from off the ground.

-x-

_You can't run away from your destiny, Shinji,_ the mental voice of Yui Ikari told him as he ran down a deserted highway, trying to get away from Tokyo-3. _Everything happens as it must._

_We're Eva pilots,_ came Asuka's voice, _chosen to stop the Angels…special people…_

_Unless we defeat the Angels, humanity has no future, _his father's voice showed up after hers, _and you're the only one that can stop them._

_No, I USED to be,_ he thought, telling them of his refusal to pilot the Eva again. _I'm not the Third Child, anymore, so don't expect me to fight any more Angels. I can't and I won't._

_Coward,_ Gendo called him. _You always run away from difficult situations._

_No thanks to you both, _Shinji told his parents. _All I have left now is protecting Nabiki, who really likes me as a person…and cares about me as a person._

_You're just lying to yourself, baka!_ Asuka told him, trying to make him disbelieve the little girl really liked him. _That's just a cheap method to use to make yourself think you're really worth something._

_That's not true,_ came Nabiki's voice, as she appeared beside Shinji. _I do care about him as a person. I don't know him as a pilot, who was just your tool to exploit. He can do better without an Evangelion and play hero when all you really want is to do harm to the world. How many people have to die to save it every day?_

_All of them,_ Yui, Gendo and Asuka responded to her. _All of them have to die to save them._

_-x-_

_ I'm…alive?_ Thoughts belonging to Rei went, as she came to in the medical ward, feeling her right leg had been bandaged and mended.

Meanwhile, in another room in the ward, Asuka had came to and was less than displeased to see her own body bandaged up because of the damage her Evangelion had sustained from fighting Unit-04.

_There wasn't even anyone piloting it or an Angel possessing it! _Her mind shrieked out. _How could I lose to a walking doll?!_

As she threw her tantrum out, Misato pondered what do. While she was glad that Shinji and Nabiki were able to get away, things were no longer making any sense: Unit-04 came back and was able to operate without an energy source or a pilot, Unit-01 rejected the Dummy Plug and was also acting out without a pilot, NERV's two remaining pilots were on the mend with the Evas in the shop due to the damage that Unit-04 did to them. She felt that the secrets that were being kept from her were now mixed with the insanity that all started ever since Toji was killed. And they were at a complete loss if an Angel decided to show up and attack them. The only Eva that was probably even capable of battle was the one that wasn't in their control and could function without a pilot.

_Nothing's making sense, anymore,_ she thought, walking through the hall.

-x-

"…I don't think we're ever going to get a good night's sleep for a while," said Shinji to Nabiki as they ate a few more fruits that composed their breakfast.

"I don't see how we can, not with people saying that everybody's gotta die to save the world," she told him back. "Nobody should die to make a difference for anything. Getting hurt, maybe, and even do time in jail, but never die."

"Nabiki, we should do what the ones that want to bring about the end of the world have been trying to do the opposite of."

"Which is?"

"Tell the truth to the world, as opposed to hiding it."

"Okay, but to who? People like that man from the last time we were at NERV might have people in places where they can have eyes on the lookout for whatever they don't want getting out into the public for others to know about, like why the Angels keep attacking Tokyo-3 and no other places."

"We tell the public. Unit-04?" Shinji went to the Eva. "Are you able to broadcast text and voice messages to a selected location for all to see and hear?"

_I could try,_ the Eva responded. _Let's do this._

"Okay, but only one problem: Where do we start first?" Nabiki asked them.

-x-

"Hey! Unit-04's been spotted again!" Hyuga shouted, seeing the silver Eva approaching a city that wasn't Tokyo-3. "It's in…Yokohama?"

It had been seven days now since the Eva attacked the Geo-Front, and since that time, it could've gone anywhere it chose to go without being seen, since it disappeared after its attack. But to show up in Yokohama, which, by all technical means of land-based travel, should've been more than a week's way to get to, since it was another island of the Japanese archipelago. But it managed to get there in just a few short days.

"What's it doing there?" Misato demanded, knowing that there were no NERV branches anywhere on the island that Yokohama was on.

-x-

"Attention, people of Yokohama!" Nabiki said over Unit-04's intercom system with a recently-acquired megaphone. "This is an emergency broadcast of the truth that has been hidden from you. So, please, listen!"

The people of Yokohama that saw the Evangelion stepping into the city suddenly stopped to listen.

"If you've heard of the organization known as NERV, then, you've been lied to by them," Shinji told them next. "The enemy known as the Angels are the least of people's worries. The people that control NERV are the real enemy. They wish to bring about the end of the world once the Angels are gone. They don't care about what happens to you, your friends or families. Ask yourself this question: "How many people have to die to save the world?" and you'll find that your answer is just as horrible as the question is. Tell all that don't know, as well. The truth must be known. You've been lied to. NERV's superiors want to bring the end of the world and will do whatever it takes to make that happen."

Some of the people, who've heard only bits and pieces about the NERV organization, couldn't believe that the people that ran or funded its operations were trying to end their continued existence. Some of them were told by friends and relatives about the Jet Alone incident that nearly caused a nuclear catastrophe months ago when the people trying to shut NERV down lost control over it. While some were disgusted by the fact that it used nuclear energy as a power source when it was designed for combat, they were more-disgusted by the fact that the Evangelions cost millions to construct and maintain, along with causing mental instability for their child pilots and not working for more than five minutes or so. Even the sight of this silver one was disgusting them.

"Daddy, how many people have to die to save the world?" A little girl asked her father.

"Mommy, what is this NERV organization that they're talking about?" A little boy asked his mother.

People were questioning each other on the many questions they had to ask for answers, and one of their most important questions was how, exactly, did whoever was piloting the Eva in front of them know so much of what NERV was up to. Unfortunately, that question was known by the psychic pair, who answered for them.

_My name…is Shinji Ikari, former Third Child of NERV,_ Shinji sent his telepathic response to the people, _and we know because of Eva Unit-04. It told us of what NERV and its higher-ups are trying to do and why it wanted to prevent such an act of darkness from happening. NERV's leader, Gendo Ikari, has already shown that he views people as disposable tools when he made me, against my will take the life of a person I tried to save, and has even tried to kill his sister a few days ago. And if you people are wondering how I'm speaking in your heads, I had discovered, over a month ago, that I had been cursed with ESP, courtesy of my mother, Yui Ikari, who's also trying to end the world._

-x-

"…Based on what we could obtain from what few contacts we had in Yokohama, the Third Child and the girl were telling what they knew to the public," an agent of Section Two told Gendo.

Gendo, as ever, simply frowned and demanded to have their few contacts in Yokohama try and capture the Third before he tried to get away again.

_I should've shot him in his legs when I had the chance,_ he thought, looking down at his hand that was burnt a second time in his goal to be returned to his wife. _In his legs and his arms._

As he sat in his office thinking about how to handle Shinji with what he was trying to tell the world, in another part of the Geo-Front, Misato was looking for Kaji, who'd been avoiding her for days now, wanting to know just what Gendo was planning.

_If there's anyone that can put some light on this, it's Kaji,_ she thought as she strolled down the hall, going down to the chamber where Adam slept, hoping to find her old love interest there.

Accessing the command lock, she entered the chamber and saw the incomplete Angel, the Lance of Longinus still preventing its nigh-completion from graduating further. Looking around, she saw her old lover hiding in the shadows, looking over at her.

"Figured I'd find you here," she told him as he stepped out of the shadows.

"You shouldn't have come. You could've been followed." He told her back.

"People rarely come down here…unless they got a reason to," she shot back. "Did you know anything about Unit-04 coming back?"

"No," he answered her. "I was as surprised as you or anyone else was about Unit-04 reappearing. I was even surprised that it would actually go to Yokohama."

"Okay, then, what is Commander Ikari really up to, and don't try to hide the truth from me."

"I don't know. I'm still looking for the truth."

"Your obsession with the truth is gonna get you killed one of these days."

"Not today, Katsuragi-San."

"I'm guessin' you're still in awe that Shinji and the Suzuhara girl have psychic powers, aren't you?"

"Most people don't believe in ESP except in comics and movies from pre- and post-Second Impact. Except in that article about a girl named Carrie White that was several decades before Second Impact…in the year nineteen seventy-nine and that article was fact…or as fact as it could when the people that wrote about it were unsure about what had happened with the girl themselves."

"Yeah, I heard about that article, too. There were survivors of an incident that was called _The Black Prom_, and they said there was a prank taking place. Carrie was covered in pigs blood as a plot to humiliate her in front of the whole prom, and more than one-hundred and fifty people were killed, afterwards. People that survived that night believed the deaths and destruction to their town of Chamberlain was caused by the same girl that people sought to humiliate."

"I once asked Ritsuko if she believed the article when I told her about it, but she answered that she didn't, that it could've been a lie for all we knew at the time."

"I didn't think that Shinji would possess those abilities, though. I mean, I once asked him if he was awake, still, and he told me he was going to bed, and that's when I felt the whole apartment shake, like an earthquake came and went."

"You mean you felt the ground shake, as well? It wasn't stated in the news, but some people were talking that the city experienced a slight tremor that night."

"Really? But…it couldn't have been Shinji. He's just… Maybe an Eva can do something like shaking the ground up every time an Angel shows up, but just a boy like him, emotionally-devastated by one of his friends' death and the complete isolation of whatever other friends he had since he got here, just can't be capable of causing a large tremor like the one that the whole city felt. It's just… It can't be possible for someone like him."

"Look at who his parents are like, Misato. Who knows what he's capable of? It's safe to assume that he won't be like his father if he's protecting that Suzuhara girl he's with as a means to compensate the boy's death…and not piloting the Eva."

"I don't think he's looking at Nabiki as a means to compensate for Suzuhara's death. He really just wants to keep her safe. If I'd managed to tell him who was almost about to kill her, he'd probably be driven to ensure she'd remain protected."

"And who tried to kill her?"

"Ritsuko. I heard her say so when I tried going to the hospital to see the girl."

-x-

"…Send Dr. Akagi in," Gendo demanded over his phone, thinking that, with Shinji and the Suzuhara girl going rogue with the independent Unit-04, enough was enough.

When Ritsuko stepped into the dark office, she stood in front of him.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" She asked him.

"I believe it's time to put your little idea of a helpful project into motion," he told her. "How soon can it be done?"

"Just four hours," she answered him, never believing she'd be given this opportunity to implement her project that could be beneficial to NERV.

"You may proceed."

-x-

After they had revealed what they knew to the people of Yokohama, Shinji, Nabiki and Unit-04 went into hiding again, using one of the city's largest, abandoned warehouses to hide away from the population as they waited for some sort of sign. A sign of light and hope…or a sign of darkness and pain. Whichever came first.

"Hey… Unit-04?" Nabiki asked the silver Evangelion. "Can I ask you something?"

_Sure,_ it answered her, _ask me anything, really. It's easier to understand a person the more you converse with them._

"I know that people say that…well, your predecessors all require a teen to be able to move about, and even after that need is met, they only function for one-five minutes when they don't have that cable thing that acts as an outlet for their energy needs…"

_You wish to know how I, an Evangelion like they are, am able to do so without these requirements?_

"Yes, please."

_I simply think about moving. I think…I concentrate hard enough on a required thought, and I move without restrictions. As people would often say, "Only the mind can grant you power". As long as I think about what I wish to do, along with not having a child go through tormenting lengths to be able to pilot my body, I can move like any regular individual without a power source._

"It might be a combination of telepathy and telekinesis that would probably explain your abilities, Unit-04," said Shinji to them. "You use telepathy to broadcast your thoughts to us so we can speak to each other, and you use telekinesis to move without restrictions. It could happen."

_And I've just discovered one other thing right now: I hate being called Unit-04. It makes me seem like a soldier or a robot, both of which are puppets._

"I don't like the designation, either," said Nabiki. "You need a better name. Do you know of any good names, Shinji?"

"Just one: Rion."

_Rion…Then, so be it. As of now, my name is Rion._

"Like the movie? _Galerians: Rion_?" Nabiki asked, curious.

"Yeah," Shinji answered her.

"Rion's a good name. I like it."

Almost two hours passed into the day until the afternoon became nighttime, and the three were around a small fire. Nabiki laid in a sleeping bag that Shinji managed to secure from somewhere in Rion's left leg (he was completely unsure as to why an Evangelion would have a sleeping bag inside it with a first aid kit and flashlights) while Shinji simply slept in his regular clothes. Rion, not requiring any sleep for the moment (and they weren't even sure if he could sleep), stood guard over them again as they slept.

Nabiki dreamt of a terrible future, one where there were many children being hunted down by their parents, like cattle, for a purpose unknown to her. But what really disturbed her about the parents hunting their children was that the mothers looked like ghosts: They were see-through.

Shinji, on the other hand, dreamt of the same highway street at night after his first sortie in Unit-01, where, instead of running away from an abomination, he was just walking down the road, covered in dirt and blood, clothes ripped, revealing cuts on his arms and right leg, and the expression of utter loss on his face.

_They're all gone,_ he thought, referring to the innocent people of the worst city in Japan. _They killed them… They killed them…_

Then, the background changed from a dark setting to a light setting, with a beautiful meadow, thousands of flowers and butterflies around. A tranquil setting, like a pleasant dream come true. It brought his emotions to a calmer level.

"Shinji?" Nabiki's voice called out to him as she appeared right next to him. "I don't think NERV's gonna let us go that easily."

"We're locked in a nightmare that has no end," he responded. "I was on that same highway, trying to get away from the Eva."

"I was watching a world where children were being chased by their parents for something terrible."

"How terrible?"

"Very terrible."

-x-

"Will Aida, Kensuke, please, report to the principle's office immediately," said a woman over the school intercom, and the military otaku obliged, got out of his seat and left the classroom. "Will Horaki, Hikari report to the principle's office, as well? Thank you."

The class looked over at the class representative, and she got up to leave. One of them being Asuka, whom was very curious at what could her only friend be needed in the principle's office for.

_What could I possibly be needed to see by the principle for? _Hikari and Kensuke both thought as they reached their destination. _Here goes._

Entering the principle's office, they saw a woman with a mole by her left eye, wearing what looked like a white lab coat.

"Are you Kensuke Aida and Hikari Horaki, respectively?" She asked them, to which they nodded. "I'll get right to the topic. You know Shinji Ikari, the Third Child, right?"

"Used to," they both responded.

"Everybody in the whole school knows of him and what he did," Hikari told her. "If you're here to ask if we know where he is, I have no clue. He could be hiding under a rock for all I care."

"Ditto with her," Kensuke added, making no hint that he had no feelings whatsoever if his former friend was alive or dead.

"Well, we know where he is," the woman told them. "He's in Yokohama right now."

The teens looked at her like she had gone crazy.

_How'd he get there in just a few days on foot?_

"The reason to why I'm here is that NERV has begone a new project…and you two have been selected as candidates to start it." The woman explained. "I trust you've heard a little bit about the study of ESP, have you?"

"Extrasensory Perception? Only in the movies." Kensuke answered.

-x-

"Here's something new," said Kaji, as Misato and he were hacking into the Magi computers (picture the same spot that Misato was in during the _End of Evangelion_ film when she was on that terminal and there were empty cans of coffee). _"'The E-Human Project', a sub-level program under the 'Evangelion Project': Accessing the potential of ESP."_

"What is NERV up to now?" Misato wondered. _This is crazy and things will get crazier. It would be, probably, the craziest if Shinji had to deal with people with the same powers as his, like some type of bad video game._

"Looks like they got two of the pilot candidates for this new program: Kensuke Aida and Hikari Horaki," Kaji informed her.

"Shinji's classmates?" She asked, looking over at the monitor that showed their photographs. "Oh, no."

-x-

Waking to the afternoon sun, Nabiki found herself in a park, on a bench, having no recollection of ever leaving the abandoned warehouse that she, Shinji and Rion were taking shelter in. She looked over to the other end of the bench and saw Shinji, reading a newspaper.

"Shinji? How'd we get here?" She asked him.

He took his eyes off the paper and on her and answered, "You had suggested a tranquil setting for a while when I originally intended to go find a newspaper to see if anybody was talking about what we told them the day before. When we showed up here, you instantly fell to sleep on the bench and I waited for you to wake up."

"I was…dreaming again," she told him. "You were inside that purple Eva, in pain and broken."

The young man believed her, for some of his own nightmares were always like that, ever since he saw the Eva, and for many months, there were no pleasant dreams within his mental reach.

"We…should start heading to the next place to hide," he told her, and she agreed with him.

Nabiki then thought she saw somebody she had recognized from Tokyo-3: A guy that had hurt the both of them with a rifle, but didn't see anyone near them that fit the description. She felt herself slipping into her old world of subtle happiness and knew that that world of childish beliefs and ideals were becoming harder to maintain due to the rude awakenings of her future. Her only link to her brother, along with her link to obtain her future, was with Shinji, whom she trusted with her life now, even though she hadn't known him for long.

"Shinji, we should really have a proper conversation while we're leaving," she told him. "We know of each other, but we don't know each other. I wish to know you."

As they walked away from the park, Shinji responded, "Yeah… I'd like to know you, too, Nabiki. Ladies first, though."

"Well, I'm seven years old, I admired my brother for his compassionate nature…even though he had more brawn than brains half of the time, I love stories of knights and princesses with dragons and witches, and I… Well, I don't like being in the hospital all the time, and I'm terrified of needles."

"Heh-heh. That's something we have in common. I'm fourteen years old, I play the cello, I've lived a life of misery and loneliness ever since my parents… Ever since those people just decided to leave me alone, once got accused of stealing a bike when all I did was find a bike in a junk pile that still seemed to be in good condition during a rainy day, had to endure people talking about me behind my back for years, was put down by everyone in my old school before I was transferred to Tokyo-3, was sent for by that man only because he wanted me to pilot that abomination, and ever since then, life has been only colder to me, with happy times being only minute on minute days."

"Happy times and happy days should be bigger and longer," Nabiki had said to him. "And like a person's childhood, they should be pleasant and relieve all of pain."

"I wish everyone was as gentle-hearted as you are, Nabiki."

Returning back to the warehouse, Shinji had realized something: Conversing with Nabiki had been a great time, and now he knew her a little better than he used to know only of her. It was pleasant, pain-relieving, and he felt that after all of this running from NERV and the dark fate that they were trying to change, they would all be rewarded for their hardships.

Rion, worried that they were in some sort of danger, looked down at them and expressed his woe.

"Y'all being gone for so long almost made my heart pound… If I had one, of course." He told them. "Where to now?"

The psychics looked at each other and then Shinji looked back at Rion and uttered, "To Unit-02's point of origin: The NERV branch in Germany."

-x-

"So, um…what do you want us to do?" Hikari asked Dr. Akagi, as Kensuke and she were sitting at a table in a room.

"You're to just here and try to guess at what cards the other person is holding…without trying to cheat. Then, we'll proceed to harder feats to see if your mental abilities are as strong as our data states they are. Good luck." She told them, pointing to a deck of regular tarot cards on the table and then stepping out of the room.

"You wanna guess first?" Kensuke asked Hikari, picking up the cards.

"No, you go first," she replied, letting him shuffle the deck. "Tell me something: You ever wonder why he did it?"

"Why who did what?"

"That boy? Why he ran?"

Kensuke realized she was talking about Shinji, assumed, with the response, "Look at who his father is. I mean, he's not exactly the perfect model for a 'Father of the Year' award if he's not so much as tried to spend time with his family. He doesn't know his father or know anything about his father other than what others know of him. Maybe he ran so that he wouldn't end up just like him."

As Hikari picked up a card from the deck as soon as he finished shuffling them, she added, "To avoid the possibility of being predestined to follow in your parents' footsteps is a pretty lame excuse to flee into the night. Guess which card I'm holding up."

Inhaling through his nose, Kensuke tried to think hard on the card the Class Rep was holding up, trying his hardest not to cheat, and said, "Nine of Swords."

Hikari set the card down, revealing it to be the very card he uttered: Nine of Swords.

"Not bad for your first try," she praised him, and picked up another card. "Guess again."

Putting out everything else in his mind, Kensuke uttered, "Death."

And again, he had guessed correctly.

As she picked up more and more cards, Hikari was losing her patience with what the project was really to do with them both. The next thing she knew, the cards that were guessed correctly by her classmate were levitating off the table by themselves. It surprised them that something like that would happen.

-x-

GASP! Nabiki awoke from a massive nightmare that made Shinji wake up to check up on her.

"Are you alright?" He asked her.

"I saw…two people in pain," she panted, sweating from the intensity of the dream. "A boy and a girl, about your age, suffering in the rain."

"Did you see their faces?"

"Un-uh. It was too dark."

Checking his watch, Shinji found the time being six minutes after four in the morning, and they were still journeying through the ocean toward the NERV branch in Germany, hoping to find some sort of sign that what they were trying to do was bearing good fruit. Travel by a former Evangelion wasn't all bad, as the sentient creature moved a lot faster than the other Evas, and it gave them oxygen without the need for the LCL that Shinji despised and kept them protected from the deep sea pressure. He then noticed that Nabiki looked distraught and asked if she was feeling sick.

"No, it's not that," she confessed. "That nightmare I had felt too real. The boy and girl were suffering from the same problem…but for different reasons: The boy died laughing…and the girl died hating herself for something."

Shinji couldn't think of anything that would make a boy die laughing or a girl die hating herself. It was harder for him to cease his thoughts of Asuka, after already deciding that, even if he did try to like her, there would've been nothing between them because of her attitude against him.

"I don't see how anyone could wanna be with her," he heard Nabiki say to him.

"Huh?"

"That girl with the red hair. Asuka. I don't see how anyone would want to be with her."

"Only a guy with a death wish for her would wanna be with her."

"You…used to live with her. How was she like?"

"Always abusive and complaining, especially toward me. Whenever there was a problem, she always blames me for it, even when she should already know that I'm not responsible for everything that goes wrong at home. It's like she expects me to understand her every time I see her, and I can't because she never says anything about her, so understanding her is impossible…and I tried to understand her, more than once, but I never could understand her. Not with that ego of hers."

"I don't think I'd understand her, either, and I'm a girl, as well. And I don't think she'd like me, even a little, just because she never liked Toji."

"Hating you because of your brother would be wronger than wrong, Nabiki. I talked a lot to him every chance I had and he was a great guy once I got to know him. You? You're pretty and bright. You're worth what I had to go through to find you."

"You're really amazing when you speak of kind things to me. You're one of the only people that has ever shown me kindness. I couldn't see kindness in almost anyone else, not even that woman with the blond hair and mole."

"Blond hair and mole? Oh, you mean Dr. Akagi." He realized, and was instantly reminded of her role in Toji's murder.

Nabiki felt his anger and apologized.

"I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," he replied to her. "It's hard for me to see kindness in her, as well. She seems more like the type of person that can only view the world in terms of theories and numbers the way a scientist would. I don't think she'll ever change."

"I don't like her…or that man that threatened us with the gun."

_We're nearing land,_ Rion told them._ We shall be arriving in ten minutes._

"Thank you, Rion," they told him.

There was silence between the two children for three minutes later…until Nabiki spoke up again.

"I…have had other dreams…about you, Shinji," she told him.

"You…dream of me?" He questioned.

"Yeah. They were during our time back at NERV. In one, I saw you and Ayanami, but the girl seemed more distant than she did when I saw her. It was like she was a different person, incapable of forming relationships with people."

"I was once told that she's not adept at living. I guess forming relationships is included in her unadeptiveness. It's not easy, trying to socialize with anyone."

"In another dream, Asuka tried to hurt you with a big knife and a crazy smile."

"I wouldn't put it past her to want to do that to me."

"The last dream was more terrifying than the rest of them. You were stuck inside the purple Eva, and entrapped by a giant Ayanami with black and red eyes. You were screaming."

"Yikes. That is terrifying."

But what Shinji didn't want to tell her about that dream…was that he had recently dreamt it himself, but felt like it wasn't a dream. It was more like a premonition, a glimpse of what was to come, but now that they left NERV, his later recurrences of such a premonition were faded, like it wasn't going to happen now. And still, as much as he wanted to believe in a future for himself, all he could see so far…was just the darkness that was consuming him.

To be continued…

A/N: A long time since this story was started, and now I have to cut it into pieces. Maybe two chapters or more until it's finished, but one day, it'll be done. Please, read and review.


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